With the new US rules for drone flights it’s possible that UAVs will be used by criminals, and also there is a very real threat of abuse of civil liberties by police and intelligence agencies, says Ed Kinane, activist with the Upstate Drone Action.

RT:Let's look at the bright side first.
What advantages could the widespread use of domestic drones bring
to businesses and customers?

Ed Kinane: There are various practical uses for
drones. For example, farmers might use them to survey large
acreages to check on perhaps diseases in their crops. Real estate
agents might use them for photographing properties so they might
better sell them. News gathering organizations could use drones
to get special camera angles that couldn’t get otherwise. Some
corporations see themselves delivering products to customers
using drones.

RT:How much of a potential danger do these
drones pose to commercial aviation?

EK: The risk of accidents I think is very high.
The technology is rapidly developing but it still needs to
develop much more before it’s really safe. And then there is also
the risk that amateurs using drones may cross the path of
commercial flights leading to collisions. Also, the drones may
crash. There isn’t necessarily a lot of quality control with the
drones. So they might get out of control and crash, damaging
property or maybe even hurting people. There is a risk of the
drones being hacked by parties who maybe have bad intentions.

RT:Do you think there will be people who
will try to use domestic drones for illegal activities?

EK: I’m sure they will. You can picture
criminals using them; you can picture insurgents using them, you
can picture terrorists using them. But my particular concern
would be that intelligence agencies and police abuse them. I
think that is a very real threat of abusing our civil liberties,
our First Amendment rights here in this country.

RT:A huge amount of surveillance data could
be gathered by these drones. Should people be concerned by
this?

EK: I think we should be very concerned about
the abuse of the drones for surveillance. Already we have US
intelligence agencies like the FBI, NSA gathering enormous
amounts of surveillance data with very little control over them.
And we’ve seen that our intelligence agencies don’t necessarily
respect out laws regarding these matters. Trying to enforce
regulations is very difficult especially when you go up against
the NSA, the National Security Administration, or the FBI, or
Homeland Security. There is very little in the way of
enforcement.

The FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration, is already
stretched very thin. And it’s not their function to be enforcing
the rules and regulations, and they don’t have the means to do
it. It is a very risky situation we’re going into…We would have
many drones in the air probably... how do we know which ones are
doing what? It would give very good cover to spy drones because
we’re just used to seeing drones in the air. So we don’t think of
it when we see drones that really are performing functions that
are very inappropriate for them.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.